Theirs was that love which Christ when on earth defined as comprising all the law and the prophets. Sectarian strife, denominational bitterness, were unknown. They had a great general foe to fight, how could they quarrel with one another. Here arose love to man which knew no distinction of race or class, but embraced all in its immense circumference, so that one could lay down his life for his brother; here arose love to God which stopped not at the sacrifice of life itself. The persecutions which raged around them gave them all that zeal, faith, and love which glowed so brightly amid the darkness of the age. It confined their numbers to the true and the sincere. It was the antidote to hypocrisy. It gave to the brave the most daring heroism, and inspired the fainthearted with the courage of despair. They lived in a time when to be a Christian was to risk one's life. They did not shrink, but boldly proclaimed their faith and accepted the consequences. They drew a broad line between themselves and the heathen, and stood manfully on their own side. To utter a few words, to perform a simple act, could often save from death; but the tongue refused to speak the formula, and the stubborn hand refused to pour the libation. The vital doctrines of Christianity met from them far more than a mere intellectual response. Christ himself was not to them an idea, a thought, but a real existence. The life of Jesus upon earth was to them a living truth. They accepted it as a proper example for every man. His gentleness, humility, patience, and meekness they believed were offered for imitation, nor did they ever separate the ideal Christian from the real. They thought that a man's religion consisted as much in the life as in the sentiment, and had not learned to separate experimental from practical Christianity. To them the death of Christ was a great event to which all others were but secondary. That he died in very deed, and for the sons of men, none could understand better than they. Among their own brethren they could think of many a one who had hung upon the cross for his brethren or died at the stake for his God. They took up the cross and followed Christ, bearing the reproach. That cross and that reproach were not figurative. Witness these gloomy labyrinths, fit home for the dead only, which nevertheless for years opened to shelter the living. Witness these names of martyrs, those words of despair. The walls carry down to later ages the words of grief, of lamentation, and of ever-changing feeling which were marked upon them during successive ages by those who were banished to these Catacombs. They carry down their mournful story to future times, and bring to imagination the forms, the feelings and the deeds of those who were imprisoned here. As the forms of life are taken upon the plates of the camera, so has the great voice once forced out by suffering from the very soul of the martyr become stamped upon the wall.
Humble witnesses of the truth; poor, dispised, forsaken; in vain their calls for mercy went forth to the ears of man; they were stifled in the blood of the slaughtered and the smoke of the sacrifice! Yet where their own race only answered their cry of despair with fresh tortures these rocky walls proved more merciful; they heard their sighs, they took them to their bosoms, and so their cries of suffering lived here, treasured up and graven in the rock forever.
The conversion of Marcellus to Christianity had been sudden. Yet such quick transitions from error to truth were not unfrequent. He had tried the highest forms of Pagan superstition and heathen philosophy but had found them wanting, and as soon as Christianity appeared before him he beheld all that he desired. It possessed exactly what was needed to satisfy the cravings of his soul and fill his empty heart with the fullness of peace. And if the transition was quick, it was none the less thorough. Having opened his eyes and seen the light of the Sun of Righteousness, he could not close them. Rather than relapse into his former blindness, he gladly welcomed his share in the sufferings of the persecuted.
Conversions like these distinguished the first preaching, of the Gospel. Throughout the heathen world there were countless souls who felt as Marcellus did, and had gone through the same experiences. It needed only the preaching of the truth, accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit, to open their eyes and bring them to see the light. Apart from divine influence over human reason, we see here a cause for the rapid spread of Christianity.
Living and moving and conversing with his new brethren, Marcellus soon began to enter into all their hopes and fears and joys. Their faith and trust communicated themselves to his heart, and all the glorious expectations which sustained them became the solace of his own soul. The blessed word of life became his constant study and delight, and all its teachings found in him an ardent disciple.
Meetings for prayer and praise were frequent throughout the Catacombs. Cut off from ordinary occupations of worldly business, they were thrown entirely upon other and higher pursuits. Deprived of the opportunity to make efforts for the support of the body, they were forced to make their chief business the care of the soul. They gained what they sought. Earth with its cares, its allurements, and its thousand attractions, lost its hold upon them. Heaven drew nearer; their thoughts and their language were of the kingdom. They loved to talk of the joy that awaited those who continued faithful unto death; to converse upon those departed brethren who to them were not lost but gone before; to anticipate the moment when their own time should come. Above all, they looked every day for that great final summons which should rouse the quick and dead, and arraign all before the great white throne.
Thus Marcellus saw these dismal passages not left to the silent slumber of the dead, but filled with thousands of the living. Wan and pale and oppressed, they found even amid this darkness a better fate than that which might await them above. Busy life animated the haunts of the dead; the pathways rang to the sound of human voices. The light of truth and virtue, banished from the upper air, burned anew with a purer radiance amid this subterranean gloom. The tender greetings of affection, of friendship, of kinship, and of love, arose amid the mouldering remains of the departed. Here the tear of grief mingled with the blood of the martyr, and the hand of affection wrapped his pale limbs in the shroud. Here in these grottoes the heroic soul rose up superior to sorrow. Hope and faith smiled exultingly, and pointed to the light of immortal life, and the voice of praise breathed forth from the lips of the mourner.
THE PERSECUTION.
"Ye have need of patience, that after ye have done the will of God ye might receive the promise."